RFID's Cost Of Entry Gets Everyone Involved

Companies still have many concerns about deploying radio-frequency identification technology, from high costs to the impact on business processes. But some business-technology executives and RFID experts who attended an online roundtable last week hosted by InformationWeek and Optimize magazines say the technology also is generating excitement among top executives at their companies. Such enthusiasm could help bridge the divide that sometimes still exists between business-technology executives and senior-level management.

The significant cost of entry for RFID deployments means that very senior managers at consumer packaged-goods manufacturer Unilever Group are actively participating in standards development and working hard at "understanding the proposition," said John Keith, senior VP of IT applications at Unilever. "There's a much better understanding of the concept and certainly an excitement. That's what I find encouraging...Everyone is cautiously optimistic."

But Marc West, senior VP and CIO at Electronic Arts Inc., a maker of interactive entertainment software, said questions remain as his company prepares to move a couple of RFID pilots into production mode. "How do we get the process and mechanisms into repeatable modes that we can trust?" he asked.

Another issue some companies may have to deal with is that North American businesses may wind up using different RFID standards than European ones, said Evangelos Simoudis, a partner with investment firm Apax Partners Fund who focuses on enterprise software. Standards in North America are evolving, and some companies are waiting to see the final specifications before moving RFID into production.